Free Republic

Unemployment rose from 9.8% to 10.2% in October, accroding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which also reported a loss of 190,000 jobs. Obama’s promise to tackle unemployment and to “save or create” three to four million jobs by 2010 seems ambitious (and difficult to measure objectively; how do you know if you “saved” a job?). Given the recent rise in unemployment and dramatic increase in the deficit, it’s no wonder that some are highly skeptical of the success of his stimulus plan. The concept of Keynesian stimulus is simple. Essentially, the stimulus is based upon the multiplier effect: the...

"No-drama Obama"? The president's flight to Copenhagen ...to make a personal pitch for holding the 2016 Olympics in Chicago was an audacious move -- and a dramatic failure. "Second City Absorbs Its Latest Defeat," read the (rather snotty) headline in the New York Times. But shed no tears for Chicago...With a projected half-billion-dollar deficit next year, the Second City is better off without the Games. We can't say the same for Obama's reputation after his in-person appeal failed to get his adopted hometown past the first round of voting. What new project can the president undertake to save face? How...

UNITED NATIONS – In his first appearance, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi issued a slashing attack on the United Nations Security Council and chastised the world body on Wednesday for failing to intervene or prevent some 65 wars since the U.N. was founded in 1945. Gadhafi called for reform of the Security Council — abolishing the veto power of the five permanent members — or expanding the body with additional member states to make it more representative. "It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the "terror council," he said. The veto-wielding Security Council powers -- the...

Don't Exhale. EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a pollutant, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them -- even without legislation. FOXNews.com Friday, August 28, 2009 Don't exhale. That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions....

When things get tough, the tough get going. In California, local elected leaders continue to make tough choices to balance city and county budgets, while our state leaders have failed to lead. In the late 1990s, the state of California enhanced retirement packages for firefighters and law enforcement unions and approved binding arbitration for contract negotiations. This gave police and firefighters unions tremendous leverage at the bargaining table, essentially forcing cities to enhance their retirement benefits for public safety workers. Those enhanced benefits are an ever-increasing drain on city resources while other sources of revenue are shrinking. They cost Burlingame...

President Barack Obama's proposed "public insurance option" for universal health coverage seems logical: A large public insurance fund will provide quality coverage for the uninsured and force competing insurers to lower costs. In practice, though, one needs only look at what decades of government health care have done to ramp up the financial and quality problems endured by Britain and France.

Further proof that the Obama Porkulus bill is a failure. From Strata-Sphere.com There is good reason to be concerned that the economy is not even close to turning around yet. I found this disturbing chart showing the Oregon and Michigan unemployment for May (which are the two highest in the nation at a shocking 12.4% and 14.1%, respectively). Not only did the levels send a shiver through me, so did the ‘trajectory’, the path the numbers are on.

WASHINGTON – Pakistan is not a failed state but its government is facing tremendous challenges and needs U.S. help to counter Taliban advances, the Obama administration's point man for the region said Tuesday. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a congressional committee that Pakistan's survival as a moderate, democratic state is critical to U.S. national security. "Our most vital national security interests are at stake," Holbrooke told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said that although Pakistan "is a state under enormous social, political and economic pressures," it "is not a failed state."

The drug-fueled crisis in Mexico is being used by some politicians and media outlets to argue that the U.S. is to blame, particularly its gun laws and society’s appetite for drugs. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” Secretary of State Clinton said on March 25 on her way to Mexico. ABC News blamed “lenient American gun laws” in its report that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives concluded that over 90% of the guns seized by the Mexican police are traced back to the U.S. Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. repeated this statistic on...

A few months ago an Iraqi throws a shoe at President Bush during a press conference; the Western mainstream media and leftist blog reaction is to call the man a hero. In their opinion Bush was evil incarnate and he had it coming; you cannot help but notice how many left wingers could barely help themselves not to express their disappointment the assailant didn't had a gun. Yesterday an Iranian throws a shoe at the demented dictator Mahmoud Ahmedinajad; the same mainstream media and leftist blog reaction: big, loud yawn.

--snip-- "After fitful, secretive talks lasting well into the evening, the would-be compromisers remained shy of agreement, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced they could have another day to work at it".

Link only - Obama declares disaster in Kentucky ice storm

WASHINGTON – Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission failed many times over a decade to fully investigate credible allegations of wrongdoing by money manager Bernard Madoff, the head of the SEC says, calling it a serious agency breakdown. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said he is "gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures" by staff to look into claims about Madoff's business and to seek formal authority to investigate.

Speaking at a rally in Columbus, Ohio this afternoon, Republican presidential nominee John McCain defended his controversial decision to "suspend" his campaign as an example of his action-packed leadership style. “Inaction was not an option,” McCain said. “I put my campaign on hold for a couple of days last week to fight for a rescue plan that puts you and your economic security and working families first. I fought for a plan that protected taxpayers. I went to Washington last week to make sure the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill."

NEW YORK (Reuters) – House Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, failed to report $75,000 of income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, his attorney said on Friday. The Democratic congressman, who has represented New York City's Harlem district for 38 years, plans to file an amendment to his previous tax returns and likely has no federal tax liability on the investment, lawyer Lanny Davis said. Rangel probably owes nothing to the federal government because of depreciation and foreign tax credit, but he may owe a few thousand dollars to the state...

HARARE (AFP) - President Robert Mugabe's government was triumphant Saturday at the failure of a UN bid to impose fresh sanctions on Zimbabwe as Britain pledged to return to the Security Council if political violence continued. Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown would discuss further measures with EU partners next week, a spokesman for the premier said in a statement. "We will continue to stand firmly for human rights and democracy and will return to the Security Council in the absence of early progress on mediation, humanitarian access and an end to violence," the statement added. Mugabe's government, meanwhile, thanked those...

An important day has come and gone and we missed celebrating it. Of course, we’re talking about Low Flow Toilet Blow-up Day, celebrated on April 27. LFTBU Day is the reasoned response to the last big environmental conservation idea: low flow toilets. Like most rushed-through, well-intentioned environmental products, low-flow toilets suffered from the most basic of flaws: they didn’t work as intended. The low flow toilet required as many as 4 flushes to operate correctly; instead of saving water, they usually used more. Most people who had the misfortune of installing a low flow toilet can truly appreciate the following...

There are only two ways she can win the nomination now. Either she must overcome Obama’s lead in pledged delegates to overturn the verdict of the party rank-and-file. For her to do that, she will have to persuade a majority of the superdelegates (or a majority of them must reach the conclusion on their own) that Obama cannot win in the general election against John McCain. For one thing, she demonstrated again that she can’t attack Obama on any front without opening herself up to similar charges. When she tried to exploit Obama’s connection to William Ayers, a former leader...

Good and bad public policy have ripple effects that are difficult to observe or tally in the present, but over the weekend I offered Lee Smith's ("The price of Annapolis") on American policy related to Lebabon right now. The degrading effects of Annapolis could be observed at the Annapolis conference itself. Caroline Glick reported in the Jerusalem Post (in a column whose heading I've borrowed): "This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference...

<p>Before Gen. David Petraeus' report, and to give it a context of optimism, the president visited Iraq's Anbar province to underscore the success of the surge in making hitherto anarchic areas less so. More significant, however, was the fact that the president did not visit Baghdad. This underscored the fact that surge has failed, as measured by the president's and Petraeus' standards of success.</p>

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31, 2007 – Afghan national security forces, advised by coalition forces, defeated an insurgent attack yesterday near Regay Village on the east side of the Musa Qalah Wadi in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The combined force was on a combat patrol when insurgents attacked from multiple compounds and trenches using small-arms fire, 82 mm mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The Afghan forces repelled the attack with accurate small-arms fire and artillery. When the insurgents reinforced their fighting positions with additional fighters, Afghan forces requested coalition close-air support. Coalition aircraft performed precision air strikes on the insurgents, killing a number of...

GALKAYO, Somalia On a dusty street that runs through this town of 80,000 in central Somalia, a cluster of men sit on low stools, lost in their daily ritual -- chewing the green leaves of a mild narcotic called khat. Lethargic and stupefied, they seem oblivious to everything. Only when their cellphones jangle -- a surreal sound in this otherwise primitive place -- do they snap to life. Soon they've arranged the money transfers they've been waiting for and lapse back into their somnolent masticating. Nothing much works in Somalia -- not water or sanitation, not health or education. But...

British forces failed in Basra, says US official By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:56pm BST 07/08/2007 A senior US intelligence official in Baghdad has said British forces lost control of Basra by pulling out troops too quickly. British commanders are preparing to hand over Basra Palace to the Iraqi army later this month The result has been a security vacuum which has allowed the city's religious, tribal and criminal factions battle it out for control of the streets. "The British have basically been defeated in the south," the intelligence official told the Washington Post. In a report...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The United Nations' highest court on Monday exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but ruled that it failed to prevent the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. The International Court of Justice said Serbia also failed to comply with its obligations to punish those who carried out the genocide after the Bosnian Serb army captured the U.N. enclave in July 1995, and ordered Serbia to hand over suspects for trial by a separate U.N. court. It specifically demanded that Serbia hand over Gen. Ratko Mladic, the general who oversaw...

WASHINGTON - While President Bush acknowledges the need for major changes in Iraq, he will not use this week's Iraq Study Group report as political cover for bringing troops home, his national security adviser said Sunday. "We have not failed in Iraq," Stephen Hadley said as he made the talk show rounds. "We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we're in a position to help the Iraqis succeed." But he added: "The president understands that we need to have a way forward in Iraq that is more successful." The White House readied for an important...

By unwittingly angering Muslims with his comments on Islam, Pope Benedict XVI has shown that he has yet to shake off his academic theological roots and master the global media machine with the same deftness as his predecessor. In clinging to theology and orthodoxy, the bookish Benedict has shown little regard for media management in getting his message across, unlike the communications-savvy John Paul II. Benedict railed Muslims when he quoted a 14th-century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Mohammed had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things, portraying the Islam he founded as a religion which endorses violence,...

Desperate flight of failed British suicide bomber By Nick Britten (Filed: 06/09/2006) Britain's first suicide bomber fought with locals, escaped being held at knife point and evaded a huge police manhunt after his mission to blow up a cafe failed, an inquest heard yesterday. Attempts by Omar Sharif to escape justice after his botched attack in Israel were disclosed for the first time Sharif, 27, from Derby, and another Briton, Asif Hanif, 21, from Hounslow, west London, travelled to the Middle East in 2003 intent on blowing themselves up. As Hanif's bomb went off, killing three people and injuring 65...

A NORTH Korean ballistic missile theoretically capable of reaching US territory fell into the sea after flying just 2km during a test launch last month, a report said today. Pyongyang on July 5 test-fired six short and mid-range missiles and one long-range missile, the Taepodong-2. All of them fell harmlessly in the Sea of Japan. Initial analysis by the Japanese Government had shown the Taepodong-2 flew about 400km, but the latest analysis showed that the missile fell in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) close to the east coast of North Korea, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing government sources....

A global warming fund could succeed where Kyoto failedAuthor: Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Senior Fellow for International Economics August 16, 2006 Al Gore has been busy returning global warming to centre stage with terrifying warnings of disaster with his bestselling book, An Inconvenient Truth, and the popular companion documentary. Tony Blair has joined—even led—the renewed focus on global warming, charging Sir Nicholas Stern, the economist, with solving the problem. Alongside his successful initiative on Africa, this is to be his sure-fire international legacy as he ends his last term in office. Getting global warming on the radar screen is only half...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Sen. Joe Biden said Wednesday his failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination nearly 20 years ago has forced him to declare his candidacy clearly for 2008. ``I'm the only candidate who has straightforwardly said for a year that I'm running,'' the Delaware senator said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``I haven't danced around. The point is, because I dropped out 20 years ago, there is the question: Is Biden serious? Is he really going to stay? The proof of the pudding is the eating.'' Biden sought the Democratic nomination in 1988, but dropped...

THE Republican majority in the US Senate has failed by just one vote to amend the constitution to ban desecration of the national flag. The motion was backed by 66 votes, one short of the two thirds majority need to get a constitutional amendment passed. Thirty-four senators voted against. The measure, backed by President George W. Bush, had been promoted by the Republican majority as it tries to rally its conservative base ahead of key congressional elections in November.

The University of California's procedures for reporting executive pay are "wholly unacceptable" and must be overhauled, a task force said Thursday. More financial oversight and public accountability is needed after reports showed UC gave executives millions in bonuses and other perks while student fees were raised to offset funding cutbacks, according to findings presented to UC's governing Board of Regents. The report pointed to a university culture of secrecy, further complicated by vague policies and lack of oversight. The report blamed President Robert C. Dynes and other leaders for failing repeatedly to fully disclose executive packages to regents and said...

WASHINGTON - The Federal Election Commission failed to give a good reason for refusing to rein in nonprofit political groups that spent huge sums in the 2004 presidential elections, a judge has ruled in a case brought by President Bush's campaign and lawmakers. In a 34-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said the FEC failed to give "a reasoned explanation" for its decision not to issues rules to require so-called "527" groups to register as federal political action committees and face the same strict fundraising, spending and disclosure rules PACs do. But Sullivan stopped short of saying the...

McLEAN, Va. - U.S. agents knew in August 2001 that Zacarias Moussaoui was an acolyte of Osama bin Laden and had traveled to Afghanistan, but they still failed to aggressively investigate, Moussaoui's defense lawyers said in a closed hearing. According to transcripts released Friday, the lawyers disclosed several details in the Jan. 5 hearing that go beyond and sometimes contradict what was disclosed in the Sept. 11 commission report, the government's most exhaustive study of the missed opportunities to foil the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The government's knowledge of Moussaoui and his terrorist connections will be a key issue...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Backers of a failed special election measure that would have forced doctors to notify parents or guardians before performing abortions on underage girls are circulating petitions to have Californians vote on nearly the same measure next November. Like Proposition 73, the initiative would require a girl under 18 to wait 48 hours after a parent or legal guardian is notified of her intention to get an abortion. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on Monday cleared supporters to begin gathering signatures. Voters rejected Proposition 73 by 53 percent to 47 percent during the Nov. 8 special election, when...

Asteroid sampling mission probably failed 16:01 07 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee and AFP The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa is likely to have failed in its landmark mission to collect the first-ever samples from an asteroid, mission officials said on Wednesday. It also faces trouble returning to Earth. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had earlier said the Hayabusa probe "most probably" succeeded in gathering material from the Itokawa asteroid, 290 million kilometres from Earth, on 26 November. The spacecraft was thought to have landed on the space rock for just one second, firing two metal pellets to throw...

BUCHAREST, Romania — The head of a European investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe said Friday it was unlikely that there were large clandestine detention centers in the region. Dick Marty, the Swiss senator heading the investigation on behalf of the Council of Europe, said he did not believe a prison like the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was possible in the region. "But it is possible that there were detainees that stayed 10, 15 or 30 days," Marty told reporters, without referring to any country. "We do not have the full picture." Marty was in...

SACRAMENTO - As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger mulls an infrastructure bond of perhaps $50 billion or more, his office has failed to comply with a law requiring it to submit a five-year plan on the state's building needs. The requirement was enacted in 1999, when California was flush with money from the stock market boom, and was intended to prevent wasteful spending. The idea was that if legislators were given a report showing everything that was needed over a five-year period, instead of just one year, they would have a better perspective from which to assign priorities to requests for new...

First some background: As a resident of NW Louisiana for the past 16 years, I have come to love my adopted state as the birthplace of my six children and a great place to live. My husband and I are trying to raise the awareness of our children (ages 15 – 7) to the once-in-a-lifetime event we are witnessing among our neighbors. We understand that this is not a particularly unique event in history. Many people have endured natural disasters commensurate ~in percentage of population involved, and economic effect~ with this event. We feel that the spectacle presented by the...

In the board game Jenga, a tower of wooden blocks is erected. Players remove one block at a time from the tower, and then stack it on top. As each successive block is removed, the tower becomes increasingly precarious. The game ends when the tower's foundation can no longer bear the weight of the structure built on top of it, and the tower falls. The Supreme Court's recent decisions in the Ten Commandments cases are a form of constitutional Jenga. Think of our system of government and the liberties it grants as a Jenga tower. In our analogy, the blocks...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In sworn testimony that contrasts with their promises to the public, the FBI managers who crafted the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorism say expertise about the Mideast or terrorism was not important in choosing the agents they promoted to top jobs. And they still do not believe such experience is necessary today even as terrorist acts occur across the globe. "A bombing case is a bombing case," said Dale Watson, the FBI's terrorism chief in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001. "A crime scene in a bank robbery case is the same as a crime scene,...

Commission on 9/11 reconvenes as watchdog By Holly Yeager in Washington Published: June 6 2005 19:02 Members of the federal commission that investigated the September 11 terrorist attacks were back at work on Monday, following through on a pledge to monitor the US government's implementation of their recommendations. “We wanted to avoid the fate of so many commissions that do good work and create a brief ripple and then find their report and their recommendations slipping beneath the waves,” said Jamie Gorelick, a deputy attorney-general in the Clinton administration, who chaired the session. The 10-member bipartisan commission, which often met...

SACRAMENTO - As the California Charter Academy grew into the state's largest charter school, it developed close ties to various local and state politicians who accepted campaign contributions and pushed the academy's political interests, according to a state audit released Thursday. Between 1999 and its collapse last summer, the Victorville-based school placed members of a tightly woven band of Republican politicians in California's High Desert on boards and gave them jobs and money. In many cases, they responded. In 2003, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster, carried a resolution for the California Charter Academy that urged state lawmakers to support adult education...

The last time anyone has bothered to look, we entered a new millennium back in 2000, and are currently living in the 21st Century. One would be inclined assume (based on their monikers) that those calling themselves 'progressive' or 'radical' would be looking toward the future and would be predisposed to welcome change and innovation. This assumption would be wrong. The very terms 'progressive', and 'radical' or 'RAD', are good examples of the FUBARING of language by the likes of one of their 'leading lights' Herbert Marcuse, and really mean their opposite. Incidentally, the use here of the term 'RADS',...

Its owner had dreamed of a liberated Ireland and perhaps even an Irish-controlled Canada. But the rare antique rifle -- carried by a renegade American Irishman 140 years ago during the failed Fenian invasion of Canada -- was instead seized by the defenders of British North America and is now set to be auctioned in the U.S. The battered rifle, the highlight of next month's sale of vintage firearms by Bonhams and Butterfields of San Francisco, is expected to fetch $12,000 because of its association with the famous episode from Canadian history. The lever-action Henry model, manufactured in 1860 pre-dates...

White land grab policy has failed, Mugabe confesses By David Blair in Johannesburg (Filed: 03/03/2005) President Robert Mugabe confessed yesterday that millions of acres of prime land seized from Zimbabwe's white farmers are now lying empty and idle. After years spent trumpeting the "success" of the land grab, Mr Mugabe, 81, admitted that most of the farms transferred to black owners have never been used. Robert Mugabe: land grab has been a failure All but a handful of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers lost their homes and livelihoods when armed gangs of Mugabe supporters began invading their property in 2000. In...

LOMA LINDA, Calif. (AP) - A Marine who received a liver transplant because of a near-fatal infection that developed after his return from Iraq may now need a bone marrow transplant. Lance Cpl. Christopher LeBleu, 22, has a "high probability" of needing the transplant because he has developed aplastic anemia, which has caused his bone marrow to stop producing enough red blood cells to keep him alive, Loma Linda University Medical Center officials said Wednesday. The hospital appealed for blood donors with Type O blood to join a registry of potential bone marrow donors so doctors can find a potential...

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly -- who escaped censure less than two months ago for conduct some of his colleagues considered verbally abusive -- lost his temper again Tuesday, causing board President Aaron Peskin to recess the supervisors' meeting and reviving talk of a code of conduct for board members. The latest incident followed a legislative defeat for Daly when the board voted 7-4 to reject a $100,000 aid package for tsunami victims -- a vote that prompted the District 6 supervisor to engage one of his colleagues in an increasingly profane exchange of insults. Daly said later that he...

The Issue: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious plans to regain control of state spending and change the face of California public education by requiring merit pay for teachers. The Spin: Lefty lawmakers and pundits assailed Schwarzenegger for "myopia," gave him an "F" for critical thinking and said he had made defenseless children his main political punching bag. The Unspin: George F. Will and others have documented how so many "reactionary liberals" in Washington fight even the most incremental change in federal taxes and entitlements they have always championed. But here's a news flash: The problem is far worse in California. At...

Congress's Paperwork HumveesFirst, fix the military's failed acquisition system.When an Army reservist in Kuwait gave Donald Rumsfeld an earful Wednesday about inadequate armor for Iraq-bound Humvees, the Defense Secretary responded by paying the soldier the compliment of candor. "You go to war with the army you have. They're not the army you might want or wish to have," he said.That's at least an honest answer, and the Secretary's forthrightness seems to have been appreciated by the troops at the town hall meeting, who gave him a standing ovation. But back in Washington, candor has gotten more than one official...